Throughout a ride on a rollercoaster you move around, you rise and fall, loopdy loop, and twirl. As you spin and twirl energy goes on a wild ride with you. KE and GPE switch power throughout your thrill-ride. Imagine your first point on a rollercoaster, you stand at the top a hill, great potential to fall, you have no KE, you stand still. You are at the highest point, you have the highest GPE that you will the whole ride. You cascade down to the bottom, shouting, waving your arms in the air. Screams echo through your ears as you level out, going at amazing speeds. You rise, anticipation builds as you are about to about to loop around. As you climb the side of the loop KE decreases, as you reach the top GPE increases. Still going at a great speed you fly around the loop and roll away with the feeling of a soaring bird. You rapidly aproach the last hill. The wind is blowing through your hair, your arms waving as GPE increases for the final time. Fighting against the uphill movement you can feel the rollercoaster losing KE. The cars come to a sudden stop as you lurch forward, hair in your face, a great feeling acts as a virus in your blood. Looking back in your ride you can see that at the beggining you are at your highest point, which means that you have the highest GPE that you will the entire ride. Standing still you have no KE. At the top of the loop you have conflicting energies. KE is still present but because of the uphill motion it has decreased, while GPE takes advantage of the uphill movement and it grows. Now at the last point as you are at the top of the hill. Once again you have the same upward movement, decreasing KE because the force of gravity is acting more heavily on it, all the while and increasing GPE, because as you rise off the groundyou have the potential to fall. Now if you play the whole ride over again you can see that when GPE increases KE decreases and when it decreases KE increases. The two energies play off of eachother, when one weakens the other is strenghtened, as you can see throughout the rollercoaster ride.
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